'AITA for asking my sister-in-law to leave after she lied about losing her job?'

A 29-year-old Reddit user has shared on the social media platform how her 32-year-old sister-in-law lied about losing her job to her and her husband, and stayed with them.

But when the Original Poster (OP) discovered the truth and asked her to leave, she was called out for being “heartless and unsympathetic.” 

Now, the OP, under the username Bluelockfanatiic, is seeking advice from other Redditors and wants to know if she’s an “AITA for not allowing her to stay after the lie?”

Woman says her sister-in-law lied to her before moving in

The woman posted on Reddit’s "Am I The A*****e" (AITA) forum that her sister-in-law “Melanie” is “kind of difficult. She's always been dramatic, but things have been worse lately.”

She elaborated, “A few weeks ago, she told us that she got fired and was having money problems. She begged my husband (28M) and me if she might come and stay with us until she was better off.”

“We've helped her before, so we agreed — but under the proviso that she would go out and seek work and do what she could for us while staying with us. She seemed to be really down on her luck, so we agreed,” the OP wrote.

However, the woman began to doubt her sister-in-law after seeing she was “still going out with friends every other weekend and blowing money on clothes, takeout, and all sorts of other things that didn't add up if she was really in as much financial difficulty as she said she was.”

Though the OP and her husband were suspicious of “Melanie”, they did not say anything to her without proof.

Woman’s sister-in-law claimed she lied because she ‘was too embarrassed’

The woman then revealed that some time ago, she “ran into one of my old coworkers who works for the same company Melanie claimed she'd been laid off from. I inquired about her well-being, and this person told me that Melanie hadn't been laid off whatsoever!”

“It turned out that she'd actually quit working there weeks earlier to reach out to us, and nobody had any idea why she was making up this story,” she added.

She further noted that after finding out the truth she had a fight with her sister-in-law, who in her defense claimed that “she had quit her job but did not want to admit that to us because she did not want to have an irresponsible reputation. She said that she was too embarrassed to tell the truth, but she still wanted to stay with us to ‘sort things out.’”

But the OP claimed to have enough as she asked her sister-in-law to leave her house. “I'm upset because she deceived us, took advantage of our hospitality, and to be honest, I don't appreciate being manipulated like that,” she mentioned.

However, now the OP has been facing accusations from her in-laws, who think she’s “heartless and unsympathetic. They say I should have been more sympathetic and that I'm overreacting.”

“I believe that she betrayed our trust, and we were justified in asking her to leave. But now I'm wondering if maybe I should have handled it differently. AITA for not allowing her to stay after the lie?” the woman asked.

Redditors think OP is NTA

One user commenting below her post wrote, “NTA - but you need to let your husband deal with her b******t.”

Another user shared, “His family has an opinion and a place she can stay. NTA.”

A third one commented, “His family thinks you should be more sympathetic to what?! She LIED about being fired, quit her job, to be able to move in with you and your husband. If they’re so worried about her they can take her in. (They won’t.) You’re NTA. Good thing you and your husband agree.”

An individual posted, “Tell anyone that says you're heartless that they are free to open their home to her. It doesn’t have to be you and your husband. There’s more members of the family and she can sponge off with somebody else.”

Another individual said, “OP, you are NTA. I really think that spouses should manage their own side of the family during ordeals like this. It is your husband's sister. You guys made the decision to help together, but primarily contact to remove the SIL should've been handled by your spouse as it is his sister.”

“NTA—if her family is so disappointed then maybe it’s their turn to step up and step in? Funny how people who aren’t doing anything always seem to have the most to say,” a comment read.

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